🔊 TTS Settings
Chapter 44: A Difference in Perspective
Ferda returned safely to Valdrova Castle. Arwen, after seeing him through the gates, immediately headed back to Count Consilius’s territory.
At the main gate, Ruri greeted Ferda and his party.
“How was the journey?” she asked in a formal tone.
Ferda responded just as formally.
“It was comfortable. No attacks, and with the escort, it wasn’t boring.”
“I see. But it seems like you’ve gained an extra person compared to when you left?”
When they had departed from the castle, it had been just Jed, Ferda, and a coachman. Now, there was a man lugging around a pile of luggage.
“Regent! I’ve loaded my cart. Should I load yours too?”
Malcolm, who had been unloading his belongings, noticed Ruri and froze.
“Eek! You’re that intruder from before!”
Malcolm trembled in fear. It wasn’t because of exposure to Dragon Fear. Even if it had been active, he had equipped a resistance ring before arriving at Valdrova Castle. He was simply naturally timid.
“Another pathetic one has joined us,” Ruri sighed through her nose.
“Pathetic, yes, but also a valuable specimen.”
“What kind of specimen?”
“What else but for experiments?”
“…Are you studying dark magic or something?”
“I do need to study, but not that.”
Ferda tried to step inside the castle, but Ruri blocked his path.
“What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter? Are you really asking that?” Ruri’s gaze rolled before settling on Ferda’s right hand.
“Do you think it’s okay to enter the castle smelling like that awful stench? It’s a serious crime, don’t you think?”
“…”
Ferda felt a strange chill at her words. His eyes reflexively scanned her, and he noticed something peeking out of her pocket—a green-dyed, rough towel. That towel could strip away layers of skin, and the pain was unavoidable.
Snap! Snap! The towel in Ruri’s hand crackled with white sparks.
Ah.
Was she waiting for this moment?
Ruri had her reasons. The scent of another woman on Ferda’s hand could lead to misunderstandings with Valdrova. Such misunderstandings had to be prevented.
Ferda understood that, but he couldn’t forget the screams of the knights—screams like children facing a demon. He didn’t think he could endure what they couldn’t.
Ferda glanced at Ruri again. Contrary to his concerns, she looked excited.
“Can I ask you for one favor?”
“Please, go ahead.”
“At least do it in a space-isolation spell.”
He spoke like a condemned man making his last request, and Ruri nodded solemnly.
“Of course. I wouldn’t go around spreading rumors about the Regent’s peculiar tastes.”
“…Right.”
Ferda had no energy to argue. He followed Ruri inside. What happened in the bath that day remained a secret between Ruri and Ferda.
Ferda, thoroughly scrubbed clean, finally managed to put on his clothes. His sensitive skin tingled with every touch of the fabric.
‘I have to endure.’
From now on, Ferda needed to focus. He looked down at the book on his desk—The Shadow Arts of Barbatos.
The demon of intrigue loved to move in secrecy, specializing in magic that used shadows to strike an opponent’s weak points. As a book emphasizing stealth, it was also difficult to seal. Without silver chains enchanted with form-fixing magic, the book would melt and escape.
The core principle of Barbatos’s shadow arts was clear:
“The shadow must become me, and I must become the shadow.”
Just as one had to think of the Shadow Hand as a third hand, failing to internalize this principle would lead to severe phantom pain.
‘But there are things I need.’
The biggest advantage was that the shadow arts didn’t require magic circles. Moreover, the shadow hands weren’t just magical constructs—they could be used like real limbs. This meant Ferda could use the Shadow Hand to cast other spells.
‘It’s not great for firepower, though.’
Barbatos, being a demon of secrets and stealth, used shadow magic differently from others. His magic was not strong in direct fights but was very useful for clever tricks. That’s why Ferda had chosen Barbatos’s shadow arts over other dark magics.
‘To read it, I need to remove these silver chains.’
To remove the chains, he needed to dispel the magic, and to do that, he had to understand the runes.
So, Ferda went to Echidna.
“Can you remove these chains for me?”
“O-of course! I’ll do it right away, hehe.”
Echidna looked at Ferda with a mix of a lovestruck girl and a witch lost in dark fantasies.
“Thank you. What do you want in return?”
“A reward? I don’t really need anything…”
“If you do the work, you should be compensated, right?”
“A reward…” Echidna’s eyes rolled toward the blonde girl standing next to Ferda—Mori.
“T-then, can I spend the night with Mori?”
Spending the night with Mori. If it were just two girls sharing a bed, it wouldn’t be strange. But Echidna was a witch—a creepy, drooling witch.
“Are you okay with that?” Ferda asked Mori.
Mori responded with a note:
Based on Echidna’s behavior patterns, spending the night with her would reduce work efficiency by 30%.
A 30% drop was too much. Ferda wondered what behavior could cause such a decline.
“That’s unacceptable.”
“Eh, then I guess there’s nothing I can do…” Echidna muttered, disappointed.
Ferda decided to propose an alternative.
“How about spending time with Jed instead?”
“With Jed?!” Echidna’s face turned bright red. Overwhelmed with excitement, she nodded repeatedly.
“H-how much time…?!”
“This much.” Ferda held up three fingers.
“30 minutes?! Mmm…! That’s fine! Deal!”
“…Alright.” Ferda had meant three hours, but she had happily settled for one-sixth of that.
‘If I’d said three hours, it might have gone wrong.’ Too much of anything could be a problem.
With the first reward set, Ferda decided to adjust future rewards accordingly.
“Then let’s take a look.”
Echidna, now in high spirits, placed the shadow arts book on the worktable. She put on her large glasses and began examining the book, using all her senses to understand its composition.
“Ah, the material isn’t hard—more like soft clay. The smell… sniff… distinct sulfur of hell. There’s something coppery too, like the strange scent of armpits—”
“Enough.”
“Ah, yes. Hehe…” Ferda cut her off before she could delve into more unsavory details and refocused her on the task.
After assessing the book, she moved on to the silver chains. As she infused a bit of magic into them, blue runes appeared.
“She’s like Vernel when she’s focused,” Ferda thought.
She began to understand the runes, her demeanor calm and collected. ‘If you can create runes, you can understand them.’
What Echidna was doing was like disarming a trap. By deciphering the runes, she could understand the magic and the side effects of forcibly breaking it.
“There’s trap magic here that strikes the breaker if you forcibly dispel the form-fixing magic. A normal mage would die. And this signature… it’s from the Alte Sect.”
“Can you undo it?”
Echidna grinned. “I don’t need to undo it.”
“Why not?”
“If I undo the form-fixing magic, the book might escape at any moment. Do you plan to read it just once and be done?”
Ferda shook his head. Even if he mastered all the magic, escaping the book would be troublesome.
“So, let’s loosen the conditions a bit.”
“How so?”
“Instead of completely sealing the book, we’ll allow it to maintain a certain form. That way, it’s still readable.”
“Proceed.”
“Got it!”
Echidna began chanting as she tapped the runes with her pen. Soon, a circular magic circle appeared—a 5th-tier spell. She manipulated the circle with her fingers.
‘Manipulating a magic circle…’ Even as a Grand Magus, Ferda had never considered this. Destroying and rewriting magic was easier and more common.
“Rune makers are different.”
They could touch the magic itself and understand its flow. That’s why they preferred loosening conditions over breaking them.
“Here, if I do this… Done!”
With a tap of her pen, the magic circle receded into the runes. At the same time, the tightly bound silver chains began to loosen.
“Can I read it here?”
“Yes! Of course!”
“Bring me a few thick books.”
“Books? Just a moment!”
After some rummaging, she brought a few thick dictionaries.
“But why?”
“I need to adjust the seat height.”
“Seat height?” Ferda placed three books on the chair to adjust it to Mori’s sitting height.
“Is this height okay?” Mori nodded.
“Then let’s—”
“Wait a second!!” Just as they were about to start, Echidna interrupted, wrapping her arms around Mori.
“Are you really going to make Mori read this? Subjecting a child to something worse than death?”
“Then why do you think I brought her?”
“I thought Mori missed me so much that she came to see me. Isn’t that right?”
Echidna looked at Mori with a lovesick expression, but Mori wrote on a note:
That’s not the case.
“Eek… I thought we’d gotten closer… Was I the only one who meant it?”
Yes.
Mori’s blunt confirmation hit Echidna like a thunderbolt. She sniffled, tears welling up.
“This task can only be done by her.”
“But exposing her to demonic language…”
“Yes, it drives people mad.”
“And you’re still going to make her do it? Isn’t that too cruel?”
Echidna hugged Mori, rubbing her cheek against the girl’s head. ‘Now I see why her work efficiency drops.’
“It doesn’t matter. It’s impossible to corrupt her anyway.”
“R-really?” Echidna asked, and Mori nodded.
“Then I guess…”
Still uneasy, Echidna tugged at Mori’s hair one last time.
“Begin.”
At Ferda’s command, Mori opened the book. Instantly, a pungent sulfur smell and a filthy sensation crawled over her. That was the nature of demonic language.
Just seeing it was a sin, and even looking at it would mark you.
Grooo—.
Ferda and Echidna averted their eyes from the text. Demonic language was born from hell itself. Those who read it glimpsed fragments of hell, which would haunt them for life.
“I’m no different.”
Demonic language couldn’t be blocked in advance. Its essence came from the words themselves. Ferda had also been exposed to it to learn demonic magic. His mastery of the Shadow Hand came from this.
‘But I erased it all after mastering it.’
The best approach was to learn and interpret the magic, then erase the demonic language from your mind. That’s how Ferda had learned hell’s magic without being swayed.
‘I don’t need to learn demonic language anymore.’
Someone else had learned it, and someone else could interpret it for him. Mori, the Slave Sage, would be Ferda’s scribe.
Mori stared intently at the demonic text. Her eyes ignited with a deep red flame, as if hell itself was peering through. But Mori couldn’t be shaken—not because she was flawless, but because she had no sense of self.
Demons needed a sense of self to manipulate, and Mori had none. She picked up her pen and began writing, maintaining ultimate rationality even as hell’s gate opened before her. She ignored the whispers and quickly completed the translation, then closed the book.
In her right hand was the original, in her left, the translated version.
“Did you finish it all?” Ferda asked. Mori nodded.
“Then forget everything you’ve seen.”
At that moment, the red flames in her eyes faded, returning to their original color. With a single command, she had truly forgotten everything.
Such a command would be impossible for an ordinary human, but Mori, the Slave Sage, could do it.
Soon, Mori’s body began to sway. She had used too much energy for the translation.
“Go to bed early today.”
With Ferda’s permission, Mori leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.
“Echidna, take Mori to her room.”
“Of course!” Echidna looked at Mori with a sinister gaze. “Ehehe, ehehehe…” She even began drooling.
‘Now I see why her efficiency drops by 30%.’
Ferda added,
“Just lay her down and come back. No further contact is allowed. Understood?”
“O-of course! I would never think of anything else! Never!”
Despite her words, her disappointed expression and smacking lips made it hard to believe her.
Ferda picked up the translated version Mori had completed. He started reading from the part about the Shadow Hand, which he was already familiar with.
‘She wrote it exactly as I understand it.’ He judged that reading the translation alone would suffice for understanding the magic.
Ferda turned to the beginning.
‘The reason I needed this book.’
It was the Mana Circulation Method—a way to advance from the 3rd Circle to the 4th Circle.
“Shape of Shadow.”
The page caught Ferda’s eye. Despite reading a hellish grimoire written by a Greater Demon, he felt no side effects.
‘How long would it take to reach the 4th Circle normally?’
The 4th Circle was where one truly earned the title of a mage. It was difficult, and even talented individuals needed years of dedication.
The Red Circle wasn’t much different.
‘If anything, it’s more dangerous.’
The Red Circle’s madness and danger increased with each level, making it inherently risky.
‘Was I ever the type to care about that?’
Ferda had grown stronger out of hatred, and he had faced challenges head-on to become stronger. The only difference now was that he was doing it for Valdrova.
Ferda decided to try the circulation method immediately. The method was simple: light a candle in a completely dark, isolated room and create a long, deep shadow by placing the candle behind his head. He would start by staring at the shadow.
At first, it was just about using shadows for magic, but later, he could become the shadow itself or even someone else’s shadow. The goal was to break free from convention and embrace freedom.
The shadow becomes me, and I become the shadow.
With that in mind, Ferda stared at the flickering shadow cast by the candle. In that moment, he felt his body press flat against the ground, as if trapped in a narrow, suffocating space where he could only move in two dimensions. He was completely focused on the shadow.
‘Now, close your eyes.’
Ferda carried that sensation into the circle of mana swirling in his dantian. He focused like this for about an hour.
‘I need to draw mana into the shadow and make it circulate, but… I don’t feel anything.’
Ferda’s state was too calm. For the Red Circle, calmness was like a brake.
‘It’s impossible for now.’
If it wasn’t going to work, he had no qualms about giving up. Ferda was still young, and he had much left to do.
He left the dark room and stepped outside. The moon was tilted in the night sky. It had set in the west, so it was well past midnight. He didn’t know how many days had passed. The only indication of time was the growling hunger in his stomach.
